I wiped an angry tear and gripped the butt of the pistol, dragging it across the exposed wood and spoiled papers. The heart of a crushed walnut shell trailed beneath it.
The journal lay in the corner, crooked and awkward. Helpless. Malicious. Waiting like a predator feigning injury.
Cruel. Terrible.
I pushed back from the table and stumbled to it. I picked up the broken spine between my thumb and forefinger and dropped the whole thing into my bag.
The kitchen was silent. Eerie. Judgmental.
Exhaustion crackled my edges. The battle against Crane had sapped my magic. Arguing with Gabriel had done worse. I had no plan. No course of action. Nothing to drive toward.
A muted voice cut through the silence. Another joined it. An argument muffled by curving halls and the half-cracked door.
I stared at the knotty wood, finding myself in front of the door that led to the rest of the house, not the one that led away. My hand touched the oak and pushed.
Four voices drawing me around the stairs to the small holding room to the west. Alcroft had joined Lucian and Orion while Gabriel and I argued.
“Worley is still out there,” Alcroft was saying.
“It’s not Worley,” Orion Crane replied.
“But—” Lucian.
“It’s not.” Gabriel’s voice was unsettlingly calm after his angry exit. “Worley worshiped them.”
“All the more reason to bring him to the magistrate,” Alcroft said. “Something is off there.”
“I agree with John,” Lucian quickly added.
Silence.
“It’s true, then.” The house wardspulsedwith Lucian’s anguish. “You think I murdered them.”
“Of course I don’t.” Gabriel’s voice was too dismissive.
Horror rose from my gut, leaving nothing below but hollow dread.
“You’re lying.”
“Lucian—”
“You are angry with Marietta for believing you the killer, while you think it’s me? I am your flesh and blood. Your brother. And you think it’s me.”
“It is because you are my brother—”
“I didn’t kill them, Gabriel,” Lucian said quietly. “I would have happily dispatched each of them to erase the past. I knew. Isaw. Iknowwho saved me from them. I know more than you think. And father—”
“He hadno right.”
“—didn’t have to say a word. I know more than he ever did. She approached me once, did you know?”
“Who?” Gabriel’s voice was deadly.
“High Lord First’s Lady of Steelcrest.”
The rising horror solidified. The hollow dread spread.
Like most of the gilded, High Lord Steelcrest’s wife had many titles. Most referred to her as the High Lady of Steelcrest and Nightshade, her married and natal names combined. In the company of her birth family, she might go by order and be addressed as High Lady Fifth Nightshade. But like all of the gilded, those closest to her could call her by simple natal address—Melissande Nightshade.
